Diffusion with chemical reaction in biological systems.

Abstract

The interplay between diffusion and chemical transformation takes place in practically an infinite number of systems, either in nature or in the chemical industry. A variety of academic disciplines have actively studied the phenomena of diffusion with chemical reaction in order to understand the basic laws and to utilize them in predicting the behavior of systems or to design chemical processes which produce desirable species. Obviously, the study of mass transport and chemical transformation in biological systems is of great importance in the biological sciences. Likewise, the chemical reactions of molecules in industrial systems often involve significant diffusion effects and the interplay of the two effects needs to be understood to design efficient chemical systems. The laws that describe diffusion with chemical reaction are very general and apply to very disparate systems. As was pointed out by Weisz (1973) in an informative review article, discoveries made in various disciplines often were made independently of each other. The emergence of the interdisciplinary field of bioengineering has helped in bringing together knowledge developed in engineering, the pure and the biological sciences.